Over the past few years, a lot of politicians have been trumpeting the idea of building back better. Unfortunately, most of their policies have little to do with improving the conditions of the populace and more to do with chaining the citizenry to the State. If we are serious about building back better, shouldn’t any rebuild lead us in the direction of a more vibrant, free and prosperous country for all citizens, and not just a small horde of Davos elites? What is happening to our freedom of speech, property rights, economic opportunity, religious freedom and other civil liberties? Why do they all seem to be slipping away? Is this what our overlords mean by building back better?
A cursory look at the world today compels us to ask the question—are we actually building back better or are we spiraling out of control? The truth is, in most countries, we are heading towards tyranny. We are in a revolutionary period that is dramatically changing our civilization. Without an extraordinary 180- degree pivot on every major issue we will soon experience a social and economic collapse. Regrettably, few people seem to fathom the severity of the situation. Bryce Buchanan in a recent post1 gave three reasons why the majority of people seem oblivious to the surrounding danger despite the palpable signs everywhere.
First, the Normalcy Bias is “a cognitive bias that occurs in times of crisis, leading us to disregard any signs or warnings that we are in danger. Normalcy bias is a defense mechanism that lulls us into thinking life will just continue as it always has. It is a reassuring presumption that things will get better, or, at least things will not take a dramatic change for the worse”2.
But steady progress is not the way the world works. History is littered with the stories of the rise and fall of civilizations. Tyranny, hardship, and vassalage are more often the norm, and it should not surprise us if we return to that way of life. The never-ending expansion of the State, the rejection of sound money, the attacks on Western history and the undermining of the Christian faith are all catapulting us towards despotism. One truth we never seem to grasp is that centrally managed economies always fail; there are no exceptions.
Second, masses of people can also be disconnected from reality by the Conformity Bias. People look to their social group to tell them what is true. Independent critical thinking is discarded and people adopt their worldview much like a sponge absorbs water in a bucket. Tyrants dream about populations that acquire their beliefs this way. The strategy is quite simple—lie with impunity and dumb down the population. There are no limits to the lies when the target audience is essentially removed from reality and a framework of truth.
In the book 1984, George Orwell symbolized this by showing that model citizens readily accepted the government decree that 2+2=5. Many of the lies today are equally absurd. They are direct contradictions of what we know to be true. How else can you convince a population that there are more than two genders and that a man can choose to be a woman and even give birth to a baby? How can our intellectual elites be so blind that they think the nuclear family, the foundation of our culture, is a danger to society? How can you increasingly convince humanity that it should become another “thing” in the “internet of things” and commit its own suicide?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel, two brilliant opponents of tyranny, said that simply telling the truth was one of the most lethal weapons citizens must use against tyrants. Solzhenitsyn famously stated “the simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”
Third, populations can easily be distracted with trivial pleasures while the prison walls are being built all around them. Aldous Huxley, with great prescience said, “there will be a dictatorship without tears….producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing and the use of drugs…”. A quick glance at the superfluous and often debased content of social media sites and a walk down the streets of our cities, littered with homelessness and drug addicts underscore the seriousness of the hour.
Do we really want to “build back better” or are we deluding ourselves? If we are serious about any lasting reset, we must begin by resetting our moral foundation. In the past, the moral foundation in the West was rooted in Christianity and the Holy Scriptures.
“But all this changed with the rise of the Enlightenment that witnessed a worldview shift away from Christian theology in two significant areas. First, the Enlightenment rejected revelational epistemology for human rational autonomy. Humans were no longer viewed “from above” (from what God revealed about us in Scripture) but “from below” (from the standpoint of finite, fallen, human perspectives independent of Scripture). Second, there was a corresponding rejection of trinitarian theism. This was first replaced by deism and then evolutionary naturalism, both hollow substitutes which have greatly affected how we think about human origins, design, purpose, and significance.”3
Today, Christianity no longer provides the consensus for our societal norms or for our law. The Christian consensus is all but gone and the freedoms that it brought to the world and in particular, the West, are being destroyed before our eyes. We are living at a time when decades of advancing evolutionary naturalism is coming to its logical conclusion in the areas of anthropology, morals, values, and law. All we are left with are relativistic values and competing views against Christianity e.g., secular humanism, Marxism, existentialism, nihilism, behaviorism and deconstructionism. But as Dr. Francis Schaeffer pointed out, “if there are no absolutes by which to judge society, the society is absolute. Society is left with one man or an elite filling the vacuum left by the loss of the Christian consensus which originally gave us form and freedom.”4
It was the Christian Reformation that unleashed the unprecedented levels of freedom and prosperity in the West. When building upon the Bible as God’s infallible revelation, the West was provided with both a freedom in society, based on God’s laws and summarized in the Ten Commandments, and yet a form in which that freedom could be maximized and protected. In the Reformation countries, levels of freedom and prosperity were without historic precedent. We cannot understand our society unless we understand what has happened. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously stated it, “men have forgotten God.” This is why we see the breakdown of morality everywhere in our society. The devaluation of human life is alarming and we see it in the secular sacraments of abortion, euthanasia, pornography and transhumanism. Today, the desire for a posthuman world where we become little gods connected to machines is being thrust upon us. But this folly and replay of Genesis chapter 3 will only lead to death – both physically and spiritually. It is a total materialistic delusion of crazed billionaires who are at war with their Sovereign Creator.
Don’t be deceived by the unhinged Yuval Noah Harari who tells us that the future of man is to become god (Homo Deus). Harari is an Israeli philosopher, atheist, transhumanist, homosexual, and senior advisor to the World Economic Forum. From his secular, evolutionary, and postmodern view, he argues that truth and morality are merely human social constructions. Since humans are simply evolved animals, all we need is some high-tech engineering and a few medical advances and we can make man a “god”. Who needs the Second Coming in order to overcome death when the engineers can take care of this technical problem? For Harari and his billionaire friends, we can remake man into a new humanity. All they need are billions of dollars and a State with unprecedented powers.5
But Harari and his collaborators err by not knowing who man really is and by not knowing the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God of Scripture. His view of man is woefully wrong and his view of God is blasphemous. “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision,” (Psalm 2:1,4).
If we want a real reset—one that will put us on the path to increased freedom and prosperity, we must begin by humbling ourselves before God and His Word. Dr. Greg Bahnsen wrote; “Those who refuse to presuppose the epistemic Lordship of Christ, the truth of Scripture as the standard of knowledge, and the necessity of God’s light before they can see light, are led into futile thoughts and darkness.”6 Our current situation proves the truth of this statement. We are inundated by futility and darkness that is leading us into a state of tyranny and death because we have turned from the God of freedom and life.
We must begin by restoring our moral foundation and returning to a revelational epistemology. If by God’s grace, we humbly bow before the Lord and His Word, there are at least six areas that must be reset if we are going to answer the call to truly build back better.
First, the family unit must be reset. The Biblical family is the most important and foundational institution for the progress of human culture and its flourishing. No culture, society or economy can withstand the destruction of the home. The assault on marriage, the sexual revolution and the attack on children are destroying our civilization because they are ultimately attacks on our Creator. Any attempt to build back better without the reestablishment of the biblical family as the creative norm will end in failure. It is in the home where the foundation for all education takes place, including the development of the virtues and ethics necessary for a free and democratic society. As King Solomon instructs us in Proverbs 22:6; “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
The triune God is the Creator of the family and it is in the Scriptures that He has given us the blueprint on how to organize and build families that honour and reflect Him. The family is a place where God’s grace can rest and be seen in such beautiful ways, or, it can be a real battlefield filled with strife and disharmony. We all know too many situations where family life is ugly, violent and marked by abuse, drunkenness, drugs and sexual immorality. Too many families are dangerous places to be raised because Christ is not at the centre of the home.
The State along with many of our institutions in the West hate the Christian family and are doing everything they can to destroy the home. Why? Because a well-ordered home is the most powerful bulwark against expanding totalitarianism. A nation characterized by strong stable homes has little need or desire for an intrusive State. Strong families = small State. Weak families = large State. This reality is patently obvious when you visit our inner cities where family structure has all but collapsed. In the midst of this carnage the results are stark. Broken homes, most of them fatherless and bereft of leadership, living in poverty and under the cruel thumb of government handouts.
Second, we must reset all of our educational institutions. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7), there are massive implications for our educational institutions. All knowledge must begin with the Creator, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). How can we know what is true apart from the one who is Truth? In the West, our most prestigious universities were founded by devote Christians in the pursuit of truth and in obedience to the Holy Scriptures. Take a moment to look at the mottos of our older universities. Harvard University’s motto is “Veritas” which is Latin for truth. How does Harvard University, whose motto is truth, end up with President, Claudine Gay, who must resign in shame over multiple allegations of plagiarism and a rejection of truth? Yale University’s motto is “Lux et veritas” which means “Light and Truth”, and is a clear reference to Jesus Christ who is described in the pages of Scripture as both light and truth. One of the universities I attended, founded by entrepreneur William McMaster, has one of the best mottos for a university taken from Colossians 1:17; “In Him [Jesus Christ] all things hold together”.
What is education without a Creator who upholds and sustains the universe by the word of his power and has revealed himself in both natural and special revelation? A look at our educational institutions today reflects the devastating results of rejecting God. Rather than opening the minds of students to truth, our universities have closed the minds of students and left them drowning in a sea of confusion, futility, meaninglessness and evolutionary chance.7 One thing is sure, do not blindly trust much of the science coming from our universities. Science publisher Wiley recently reported that more than 11,000 “peer- reviewed” scientific papers were determined to be fake8. In fact, one of the largest scam industries is now the $30 billion-dollar academic journal industry! As the prophet Isaiah wrote more than 2,600 years ago, “So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter,” (Is. 59:14).
Third, we must reset our priority to protect private property and invest in the development of the earth’s resources. Rather than attacking the right to private property, we must affirm the right to the ownership of the earth’s resources in the hands of individuals. No economic system produces the level of wealth and efficiently and effectively manages the earth’s resources better than a free market economy. In fact, no other system comes close. To suggest that people would be happier not owning anything is sheer folly and another lie. To strip people of their God-given property rights, a policy being promoted by some of the richest people, while they buy up all the property, would lead to abject poverty and tyranny for the masses.
God has created a resourceful earth, separate from Himself, and placed mankind as His vice-regents on the earth to develop and harness the earth’s resources. In an age characterized by climate ideology and zero-sum welfare economics, it is essential that we begin with the truth concerning the abundant wealth and rich diversity of God’s created order. Any culture that begins with the ideology of artificial limits, deifying the creation and a zero-sum vision of economic life will always find it more rational to hinder development and take from those who actually produce in the guise of distributive justice. Instead of increasing production through innovation, capital accumulation and human creativity, the economy will stagnate and lead to a loss of wealth and decreasing standards of living. Don’t be fooled by the acronym ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance). On the surface it sounds so righteous but below the surface it is an agenda that has little to do with stewarding the environment and everything to do with expanding the State while at the same time crushing our standard of living under increasing energy costs and self- imposed deindustrialization.
Herbert Schlossberg adeptly points out that the question of distribution cannot be separated from the question of production, which itself is rooted in one’s view of the richness of creation and hence your view of the Creator.
“Redistribution changes production. People do not willingly produce goods they know will be seized for the benefit of others. The redistributors will find that there is less to distribute, for a redistributory economy is less than zero sum. It is negative sum… the predictability of redistribution makes it sensible to reduce both investment and production in order to provide less for the tax collector. People consume more and hoard more, work less, save less, and invest less. Thus, redistribution is literally destructive of a nation’s wealth, dismantling capital resources and providing disincentives to replace them.”9
Fourth, we must reset the size of our government. Rather than expanding the State, we must substantially reduce the State. Over the past sixty years, Western countries have allowed the public sector, as a percentage of GDP, to increase from approximately 20% to over 45%! Without a dramatic reduction in the size of the State, it will be impossible to return to strong, free and prosperous economies. The State is the most inefficient, wasteful and unaccountable part of the economy. How can almost 50% of the resources be allocated to the State without crippling the private sector under the excessive burden of taxation and regulation?
Throughout the West, governments are passing legislation removing any semblance of democratic governance founded on basic and recognized principles such as: freedom of expression, assembly, and religion; mobility rights; property rights; a fair and responsible press; the rule of law; citizen participation; regular elections; and habeas corpus. Any reset to build back better requires a massive reduction in the size and influence of the State. Hobbes’ Leviathan must be slain.10 Recent developments in Argentina with President Javier Milei and in the United States with the re-election of Donald Trump are important moves in the direction of dramatically right-sizing the State. Time will tell whether these countries will be able to lead the way in resetting the size of the State in the West.
Fifth, we must reset our means of exchange and return to sound money. The Bible teaches us that civilizations fall when they become morally corrupt. This corruption is expressed in fiat-based currency, a violating of God’s law for honest weights and measures. Consider what happens when a government is unconstrained from the demands of sound money. If a government can print money at will, it will always out-of-thin-air, create money and force its citizens to honour this corruption of money through legal tender laws. This provides the politicians with the ability to spend more and more without directly taxing their citizens. The real tax ends up being inflation and a loss of purchasing power. It is not hard to see how a degenerating currency can lead to a degenerating culture and vice versa. As political pressure builds to print money to empower interest groups, the constitutional constraints on government power vaporizes.
The western world has experienced the very degeneration of which Friedrich Hayek warned in the “Road to Serfdom”. Over time, as he foresaw, government welfare changes the moral character of the people. Society demands more free lunches, which require evermore fiat currency. The State crowds out the self- reliance of the citizen. What economists call “moral hazard” becomes endemic, whereby individuals are allowed to enjoy the benefits of irresponsible behaviour while pushing off the costs onto society at large. For example, any introduction of Universal Basic Income (UBI) would be absolutely crippling to our economy financially. But more than that, it is a rejection of our humanity. It scoffs at the truth that we are made in the image of God and that work is the meaning of life11 and that God created each of us to cultivate his glory through work.
Today, the world is drowning in debt. We are facing a debt crisis of unprecedented proportions. The global debt-to-GDP statistics, which includes government, corporate and personal debt are appalling. In 1970, the ratio was 100%. In 2000, the ratio had jumped to 240% and today the ratio more than 320%. In the US, the federal government debt first topped $1 trillion in October of 1981 and now sits at $36 trillion. In the last year, the US has been adding $1 trillion to their debt every 120 days. The federal government debt/GDP ratio in the US was 28% in 1981 is now more than 125% today. The annual compound rate of growth in government debt over the past 41 years in the US was 8.7% with the annual growth in GDP averaging 4.6%. You do not need a Ph.D. from Harvard or Yale to realize this trend is not sustainable.
In order to service this debt, central banks around the world have dramatically increased the money supply, otherwise known as cranking up the printing press. In the US, the Federal Reserve has grown its balance sheet from $800 billion in 2008, prior to the financial crisis, to a peak of $9 trillion during COVID. Today, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is approximately $6.8 trillion. Other countries like Canada have not fared much better and are reeling under the death of sound money, dishonest governments, immoral economic policies (ie. Modern Monetary Theory) and a complicit population that no longer believes in hard work, personal accountability and production but rather in State-sanctioned redistribution.
Relative to gold, which is real money, the US dollar has lost 98.7% of its purchasing power over the last 53 years, when President Nixon “temporarily” removed the US dollar from the partial gold standard on August 15, 1971. At the time, gold was trading at $35 an ounce and today it is trading around $2,750 an ounce. This is why every investor needs to maintain a significant weighting in the precious metals to protect themselves from the ongoing debasement of our fiat currency.
We also need to be vigilant in our opposition to Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). It is encouraging to see several governments pushing back against the introduction of CBDCs, including the Unites States under the leadership of Donald Trump. While CBDCs don’t offer any unique benefits to the people, they do pose serious risks to financial privacy and economic freedom.
Sixth, we must reset the idea of the importance of the Nation State. There are three reasons why this reset is important. First, multiple nation states provide healthy competition between countries. Second, comparative advantage is very important to the progress of the overall global economy. Countries can benefit from trading with each other by focusing on making the things they are best at making. Third, the loss of national sovereignty and the expansion of globalism and a global state will lead to the greatest level of tyranny and human suffering in the history of the world. The globalist dream is to dethrone God and replace him with some sort of technological wizardry. The horror of such a world is beyond comprehension and must be opposed.
To concentrate power into the hands of one government, or one group of globalists, would be devastating for the future of humanity. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” In Genesis 6:5 we read, “The LORD saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” It was this evil that eventually led to the formation of nation states with the confusing of languages at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11).
Today, politicians and business leaders are bowing to the agendas of multinational corporations and transnational organizations, such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum. The result is that power and control in the world is being concentrated in unaccountable organizations. God-ordained nation states must push back against this rising totalitarianism and not cede any of their sovereignty to these global entities, that are stuffed full of incompetent, power hungry and unelected bureaucrats.
In summary, there is no building back better without first resetting our moral authority. Our starting point must be the sovereign God who is the creator, sustainer and redeemer of all things. Psalm 24:1 states, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” Having reset our moral authority, we can begin to speak truth in an age of lies.
Building back better means that we must reset the family, reset our educational institutions, protect private property and human rights, downsize the State and return to sound money. Lastly, we must break down global institutions with too much power and reinvigorate the nation state and local authorities.
To watch the presentation to Embassy Connections Canada click here